Ash’s stocks set to rise
by: Saibal Chatterjee
- hindustantimes.com
Things are looking up for Aishwarya Rai both on the home turf and in the global arena. While her first mainstream Hollywood film is reportedly set to roll in August, she has bagged a couple of chunky acting assignments in Bollywood to end a somewhat lean domestic patch.
India’s only real global movie star has been penciled in to play the female lead in The Last Legion, a Roman Empire era action-adventure film co-starring Colin Firth and Ben Kingsley. The film, to be directed by debutant Doug Lefler based on a novel by Valerio Manfredi, will be bankrolled by the late Dino de Laurentis’ production outfit.
Announcements of this nature have been emanating steadily for a while from the Aishwarya Rai camp and, in the absence of any concrete follow-ups, they are increasingly being greeted with degree of scepticism.
A string of international films that were supposed to feature Aishwarya in the past year and a half haven’t materialized yet. Hollywood A-list star Michael Douglas flew into Mumbai some months back and signed her on for Romancing the Monsoon. The development understandably generated a huge buzz but not much has been heard of that project since.
Around the same time that Douglas was wooing Ash, a Los Angeles-based first-time producer Zachary Coffin went to town with his plans to make a film on the Bhopal gas tragedy with the Bollywood star in the lead. Eight months have passed by but the proposed film is yet to get off the ground.
The film that Aishwarya was supposed to do with Meryl Streep, Chaos, a project that was made public well over a year ago, hasn’t progressed beyond the announcement stage.
But things seem poised to change at last. Gurinder Chadha’s Bride & Prejudice, Aishwarya Rai’s first international release, is set to be followed by Paul Mayeda Berges’ The Mistress of Spices. She has also wrapped up her work on Jag Mundhra’s Provoked. But none of these is what can be described as a big international film.
The Last Legion, however, has all the makings of a genuinely big international project. If it indeed gets going in August, it would mark a major leap forward in Aishwarya’s career.
Apart from making her the first Indian actor to land a lead role (after Victor Banerjee’s turn as Aziz in David Lean’s A Passage to India) in an authentic Hollywood production, the role in The Last Legion will give her an opportunity to replicate the global success of other Asian screen divas like Zhang Ziyi, Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh .
At nearly $100 million, the budget of The Last Legion will be considerably higher than that of an average Hollywood production. It would be by far the most expensive film in the career of the doe-eyed Indian beauty known more for her pulchritude than her histrionic ability.
The Last Legion, unlike all the international films that she has done so far, will have Aishwarya playing a character that would be independent of her nationality.
Even as Aishwarya makes inroads globally, Bollywood producer-director J.P. Dutta has singled out the lady for two major upcoming projects – a remake of Umrao Jaan and a biographical film on Maharani Gayatri Devi. By the end of the year, Aishwarya is also likely to start work on her third film with the sought after Kolkata director Rituparno Ghosh.
Bigger-than-ever Hollywood flicks coupled with a fair sprinkling of Bollywood roles of substance could push Aishwarya’s career several notches northwards in the months ahead. While the size of The Last Legion could place her in a league that no Mumbai star has ever reached, meaty screen roles like Umrao Jaan and Maharani Gayatri Devi are bound to give her an opportunity to shed the tag of an average actress.
The Mistress of Spices and Provoked are scheduled for release this year. But the year that Aishwarya Rai fans must keep an eye on is 2006. It will be Aishwarya’s make-or-break year. The fate and prestige of an entire film industry would be riding on her back. If she strikes gold, it would amount to a major breakthrough for Bollywood as a whole. But if she comes up short, she would have to bear the rap for a missed opportunity all by herself. Those are the wages of being a global star!
